More good food.

I thought the homemade tortillas were good; the mock-chapattis (made from a variation of the tortilla recipe) were FANTASTIC.

Definitely something I will make again. (I am going to scale down the recipe for next time; it would have been the perfect amount for 2 but it was a little too much for me. And I'm not sure how good leftover chapatti is, I've got it sitting in a baggie in the kitchen.

So, anyway: chapattis are a type of East Indian flatbread. Sort of India's answer to the tortilla.

This recipe is not tremendously authentic (according to Jane Doerfer, the cookbook author), but it's good:

3/4 cup whole wheat flour (I used Hodgson Mills' "graham" flour - it's a bit coarser ground than some)
1/2 t brown sugar (I used demerara and it was good)
1/4 t salt
2 to 3 T oil (I used the "light tasting" olive oil, which is my default cooking oil. Traditional chapatti use ghee, or clarified butter. But oil is easier and has less saturated fat)

Mix all those up until the mixture resembles coarse meal (It's not unlike making pie crust). Add water. (The recipe said 1/3 cup but that was too much - I wound up having to dump in a bunch of white flour (I had already put the graham back in the freezer) to soak up the excess water. (That said: that may have been a good addition; it led to a very elastic dough).

Knead for five minutes. Add more flour if needed.

Let it sit, covered, in a warm place for 25 minutes.

Then, divide the dough into golf-ball-sized pieces and roll it out. (I just roll directly on a clean countertop). The dough is VERY elastic and it's a lot easier to roll it thin than the tortilla dough (I don't know why for sure - maybe it's the whole grain)

Cook on a dry skillet heated to medium-high heat. Cook about 30 seconds on each side, until there are tiny dark-brown "dimples" on the chapatti.

Some recipes call for brushing each side with oil or ghee as it's cooked but I didn't; I figured there was enough oil in there already.

Serve hot.

I also made roasted chick peas as my main dish. Another simple recipe:

Heat the oven to 400*. Put a pyrex or other ovenproof dish in there with about 1 1/2 T of olive oil (extra virgin is good here).

Heat it for a minute or two. Then add:

1 clove minced garlic
a bit of salt
a bit of pepper
1 can (about 16 oz) drained, well-rinsed chickpeas. (You know that "foam" that rinses off of canned beans? That's partly melibiose, which is the oligosaccharide that makes beans less than digestible...rinsing canned beans is good for "social" reasons.)

Turn the heat down to about 325 and cook the beans for about 25 minutes, shaking the pan every few minutes (you could also do this in a pan on top of the stove).

When the beans are done (they get a little crispy on the outside), add any spice mix you like. (I added some Garam Masala powder I had on hand and it was good).

These are good hot but they are also good cold. They make a good snack and are also good in salads. I also think - if you had toothpicks or little forks - they'd make good party nibbles.

(Yeah, as you might imagine with my whole grain/bean-heavy diet, I pretty much laugh at the fiber supplement ads that come on tv.)

Today was chilly and windy, and it rained hard last night (thank God we didn't get any severe weather; people down in Texas did. There was a tornado in Haltom City and I think a couple people died). The trash-off was cancelled, so I took the time instead and did my "big shopping" for the month - and I got supplies to make granola, which I had been wanting to do.

Right now, I've got a batch of "Koinonia Granola" (it's from the More-with-Less cookbook) in the oven. It smells really good and I tasted a bit of the 'raw' granola, and it tasted pretty wonderful. I wanted to try this because one of the ingredients is Grape-Nuts and that kind of intrigued me.

A similar recipe to the one I used is here. Except I used oil and a little bit of butter instead of the margarine (I try to avoid trans fats whenever possible). I didn't put the cinnamon in - I have another granola recipe that calls for it that I make sometimes and I wanted to try something a little different. When it's done, I'm also going to put some raisins and cut-up dates in it.

(And, hahahaha...here's a version of the recipe auf Deutsch for anyone out there who is familiar with German. Boy, that recipe gets around...it apparently originated with a religious community (the Koinonia community) in Georgia (the USA Georgia, not the Russian Georgia) but there are many versions of it out there on the web...)

I know granola isn't exactly Special K, but as there are some days when it's 12:30 or 1 before I get a chance to eat lunch, I need a substantial breakfast. If I eat granola or those shredded wheat square things, I don't get hungry before lunchtime, but with the wimpier flake-type cereals, I usually do. (You can also fill up on less volume of granola because it's got more protein and also more "good fat" in it - from the nuts and sunflower seeds). And you don't want to see me when I'm really hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry.

I dunno. My mom's mom, most of her adult life, was at a weight (165 lbs) that would technically qualify as the low end of "obese" today (considering her height). And yet - she lived to be 92, she was climbing up on her porch roof to fix it at 80, she walked miles every day (she never learned to drive). She also ate mostly homemade foods - I don't think she ever bought bread at the store - and ate lots of veggies and whole grains and that kind of stuff. So I sometimes think maybe the hysteria about weight is just that - hysteria - if a person is otherwise taking steps to be healthy.

And to be honest? I'd rather be on the chubby side and be able to eat a breakfast that keeps me going and keeps my blood sugar stable until I can get around to lunch, than be skinny and have peaks and crashes because I'm eating highly-processed stuff with a lot of the natural food value stripped out.